Today, July 19, 2011, the Alliance-Philippines (AJLPP) commemorates as it congratulates the revolutionary people of Nicaragua and the ruling FSLN party for the 32nd anniversary of the victory of the Nicaraguan Revolution on July 19, 1979.
For the Alliance, the history Nicaragua is akin the history of the Philippines. A bloody history of foreign intervention. Both were under the Spanish colonialist and under the US occupation. The US marines occupied Nicaragua from 1912 to 1933,

Los Angeles ---Today, July 19, 2011, the Alliance-Philippines (AJLPP) commemorates as it congratulates the revolutionary people of Nicaragua and the ruling FSLN party for the 32nd anniversary of the victory of the Nicaraguan Revolution on July 19, 1979.

For the Alliance, the history Nicaragua is akin the history of the Philippines. A bloody history of foreign intervention. Both were under the Spanish colonialist and under the US occupation. The US marines occupied Nicaragua from 1912 to 1933,the Philippines was occupied by the US from 1899 to 1946.

Philippines and Nicaragua, Parallel Histories

From 1927 until 1933, Gen. Augusto Cesar Sandino led a guerilla war against the Conservative regime and subsequently against the U.S. Marines, but he was assassinated by the newly formed National Guards led by the General Anastacio Somoza.

The same way Andres Bonifacio, the founder of the Katipunan was assassinated by the ilustrados led by General Emilio Aguinaldo.

Nicaragua has experienced several military dictatorships, the longest one being the Somoza dictatorship from 1933 to 1979. But despite his complete control, on September 21, 1956, Somoza was shot by Rigoberto Lopes Perez-a poet. Somoza's brother, Anastasio Somoza Debayle, a West Point graduate succeeded his father in charge of the National Guard, controlled the country and ruled Nicaragua with an iron-fist.

In 1961 a revolutionary Carlos Fonseca used the historical figure of Sandino, and along with 2 others founded the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) and waged armed struggle.

But it took the convergence of three tendencies- the Workers, the Urban Partisans and the “Guerra Prolongada” of the FSLN to finally win the revolution that overthrow the decades of Somoza dictatorship.

The lessons of the victory of the FSLN inspired the struggle of the Filipino people that culminated with the overthrow of the much hated US-Marcos Dictatorship in February 22-25, 1986. Like the victory of the Sandinista revolution,

it was also a convergence of long years of armed struggle and intense mass struggles in the cities and the countrysides.